Plot
# 1282 is a residential project located on the northern periphery of Beirut at
the proximity of one the city’s abandoned and unused railway terminal, military
barracks, leftovers of agricultural land and a 30-meter wide highway. The zone
in which our project is located is not presently considered residential.

The
Project’s program consists of 95 industrial lofts with surfaces ranging from
100 to 650 square meters on a total built-up area of 25,800 square meters.

The
floor slabs are organized around nine exposed cores, each core feeding a maximum
of two apartments per floor. The proposed lofts feature high ceilings (5.3
meters) with open space plans and minimal interior partitioning.

The
plot surface is of 5,400 square meters. The site perimeter is 430 meters of
which less than 12 meters are facing a public access road. This implies that
97% of the site periphery faces parcels on which buildings could be erected at
some point in the future. In its present state, the site enjoys unobstructed
panoramic views on all orientations through the totality of the perimeter of
the plot. As a result of that, all proposed loft spaces enjoy full transparency
of their facades with openings that span from floor to ceiling on all exterior
elevations.

In
an unforeseeable future, as the surrounding plots get built, and with the
gradual densification of the immediate environment, the full apertures of our
facades will face unpredictable situations that our project’s morphology
responds to by its continuous setback on the totality of the perimeter of the
site and the gradual recess of the floor plates. This gesture should guarantee
generous breathing corridors along all the site’s peripheral limits for our
project and the future buildings of the surroundings.

In many sectors along the periphery of Beirut, relatively
high exploitation factors are applied on zones that are still undeveloped. In
the absence of a master plan, the rapid gentrification of these sectors has led
to catastrophic urban conditions. In most cases, the general guidelines of the
very complex and archaic municipal building laws is the only leading rule and
reference on which developers build their schemes. In such situations, it is
becoming increasingly difficult to define the integration of a project and its
relationship on the long term with the neighboring sites. Our proposal for Plot
# 1282 does not only celebrate the present state of its environment, the
absence of buildings and the scarceness of the urban fabric on which it sits,
it also anticipates the future expansion of its surroundings and its rapport
with the unpredictable conditions that will be implied by the development of
the sector.